Foods; nutrition and digestion - Susanna Cocroft

First Edition 1906
Second Edition 1912
Published by the
Physical Culture Extension Society
624 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill.

FOODS
Nutrition and Digestion

BY
Susanna Cocroft

The problem of proper nutrition for the body is as vital as any study affecting the morals, health, and consequent power of a nation, since upon the quality and quantity of food assimilated, depend the sustenance, health, and strength of its citizens.

The study of life is the most vital interest in nature. The human race spends more time in providing nourishment for the body than in any other line of activity. Next to nourishment comes self-preservation. It is intuitive, the infant’s first instinct is the preservation of life; almost at once he seeks for nourishment. His body is ever an awakening wonder to him. He begins his education by a study of his hands, his legs, and his flesh.

“The physical satisfactions of life, the joys of mental development, the inspiration of soul, the sense of growth, of expansion, and of largest happiness, the self-satisfaction of greatest usefulness, and the glorifying results of this usefulness, come in largest measure only to the person whose nutriment is proper in quantity, quality, and form and is taken properly, as to time, mastication, swallowing, and digestion, with sufficient exercise to give the body activity to convert it into use. This enjoyment of vibrant life is far beyond the joys of the intemperate or the æsthetic.” That ones energies of thought may not be constantly engaged in deciding what is best, it is important that proper habits be formed. Habit calls for no conscious energy.

Scientific research along the lines of electricity, psychology, metaphysics, medicine, and art has been tenaciously pursued for centuries; yet scientific study of the natural means of keeping the body in health, that the individual may be in physical, mental, and moral condition to enjoy and to profit by researches made in other lines, has been neglected. The result is, that man does not enjoy life to the full, nor make his physical nor mental efforts yield the best returns.

It is necessary to know the comparative values of foods as nutrient agents, in order to maintain our bodies in health and strength, and with economy of digestive effort, as well as efficiency. The entire body,—bone, muscle, blood, brain, nerve, heat and energy,—is formed from the food and drink taken into the stomach and from the oxygen breathed into the lungs; the mental and physical activity also depends upon the food. There is no study, therefore, more important than that of bodily nutrition and the preparation of food and drink in right proportions to yield the best returns under varying conditions,—age, employment, health, and sickness.

Nutrition is a broad subject. It means not only that the foods be supplied which contain elements required to rebuild body substance and to create heat and energy, but it embraces, also, the ability of the body to appropriate the foods to its needs. The study of nutrition in its full sense, therefore, must embrace foods, anatomy and physiology (particularly of the digestive system), and chemistry, in order to know the changes foods must undergo in being converted into tissue, heat and energy[1]. This study, reduced to a science, is known as Dietetics. There is no more important study for public schools, or for woman’s clubs.